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  Recommendation: Accept and advance to final interview screening.

  —G. Hitchens

  * * *

  The frigid water of the ocean seeped into River’s bones, dragging him down. He’d made a string of bad decisions, and now here he was, sinking.

  It was his own fault. He should have changed the Skym battery yesterday. One minute it had been fluttering high above the water, then it had dropped several yards from shore, splashing like a stone. He’d instinctively plunged after it. Within minutes the Skym had floated out of reach, and a rogue wave crashed on top of him. He was in over his head, and had no idea which way was up.

  He’d been overconfident. He was weak, tired, pretending the past few weeks of sparse diet and sleepless nights weren’t affecting him. For the first time, he regretted the deal he’d made with Uncle Jim: stick it out on the show until the end, or at least six months, and Jim would give it a rest about the military academy and pay for a year of travel. This time next year, River expected to be backpacking the Appalachian Trail, taking as long as he liked. No cameras, no audience, no show. Just him, alone. It was a good deal. He knew a lot about wilderness survival.

  He just hadn’t bargained on electronic contraptions tumbling from the sky.

  If only he hadn’t left his camp across the bay. It was solid and dry, tons of fish. A blue plastic barrel had washed up on his beach after that earthquake three days ago, and he’d used it as a giant bobber, fixing trotlines to it and letting it drift in the currents where trout gathered.

  His arms felt heavy, as if weighed down with lead, but he also had the odd sensation that gravity had become a spent force. The ocean had swallowed him up, and he thought perhaps he was drowning. Images of home flitted past his eyes: his parents laughing on their rambling front porch; hiking the trails behind the house with his best friend, Terrell; everyone grilling fresh-caught perch over a fire.

  He swam and reached the floating Skym. Tendrils of seaweed grazed his body, and tiredness spread through his limbs. He felt no desire to spend the last of his energy making it back to shore. Maybe he could float for a while, bob along on the waves like the dead Skym.

  If he could just rest for a bit, not worry about anything . . .

  His mother, in front of a campfire, picking the tiny bones from a perch. She made a face. It wasn’t her favorite fish.

  Work it out, River.

  It was like when she’d wake him in the morning to mow the lawn.

  Leave me alone. I’m tired.

  Get over it. Swim.

  She was right. He probably shouldn’t die like this. It would piss her off.

  He summoned a last reserve of strength, grabbed the Skym, clipped it to his belt, then struck for shore in the distance.

  How had he gotten so far out? He swam, arms aching, and when he finally touched ground, he couldn’t take a single step. All that struggle in the water had been for nothing; it’d be just as easy to die here as in the ocean. He was wet and cold, had no fire or dry clothes. Too late to do anything about it now.

  He dropped onto the sand, and his last thought was that the tide would pull him back out again and his bones would become coral.

  When he opened his eyes, he found he wasn’t dead, so there was that. The sun was too bright, and birds circled overhead. They dove in and out of his line of sight, swooping for fish. The sound of crashing water was distinct from the rushing noise in his head. So the ocean was on his right. The Skym was grounded to his left, green light gleaming and pointed directly at him.

  His Skym was recovered and charged. He somehow was still alive. And he was, it seemed, naked. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for the Skym staring at him.

  His next thought was that something was on fire, he was on fire. Smoke cloaked his lungs, and he gasped himself upright. He shivered as a Mylar blanket slipped from his chest. A fire roared in a pit beside him. His jacket, shirt, pants, and socks hung from a nearby branch like a string of dead fish. His boots hung upside down on two stakes pointed toward the fire. It looked comical, as though someone had been buried in the dirt with their feet sticking up.

  He shivered again and pulled the blanket around his shoulders, then looked for a clue to what had happened, who had built the fire, who had saved his life.

  He hadn’t anticipated what a pain the Skym would be. The producers said he’d get kicked off the show if he couldn’t keep it going, so he’d had to do that, even if it meant taking risks he knew he shouldn’t.

  The lady producer had asked, “How comfortable are you with operating the Skym?”

  He’d shrugged like it was no big deal, he could handle it.

  He remembered the way her eyes had narrowed and she’d jotted a note in her clipboard.

  She’d been right to doubt him. The Skym made everything harder in the wild. Lugging the batteries, making sure they stayed charged, the low-grade buzz as it followed him like a giant bug. And now he’d almost died rescuing the thing, and it was all on display for . . . how many people watching? Each one strapped into an overpriced visor, mouth hanging open in a trance? River couldn’t remember the number he’d been told. It’d been in the millions.

  Everything else he could deal with, even the lousy weather. That was the easy part of the whole thing: surviving.

  It was the show, apparently, that was going to kill him.

  He wasn’t dead yet, though, for whatever reason. River checked his clothes, hanging from the branch, damp but warm from the fire. He put them on and crouched close to the flames until he felt like he was being cooked, his skin tightening and tingling with heat.

  He retrieved the canteen from his pack and discovered that the dried trout he’d been carrying was missing. Only the neatly wrapped leaves he’d stored it in remained. Now that he didn’t have any food, a pang of hunger clenched his stomach.

  Worse than the cold and hunger, he felt lost and confused. His fingers, still stiff, fumbled with the screw-top lid of the canteen until he cursed and threw it into the trees. Even before it hit the ground, he forced himself to take a breath. If he were sitting at home watching himself on the live stream, he’d know that an outburst like that was the first indication of a contestant who wouldn’t last. Not if he couldn’t keep his cool, get his bearings.

  A voice behind him said, “Guess you’re awake.”

  Out of instinct, River reached to his side for his knife. Of course it wasn’t there, and he immediately felt foolish. What was he going to do with a knife, stab another contestant? He needed to settle down.

  The guy was more than a head shorter than River and wore a hoodie that he’d probably filled out better when the show started and he’d weighed a few more pounds. His lank, straw-colored hair fell over his ears, and his pale green eyes darted in every direction. He held two cups, and handed one to River, then poured steaming water from his canteen into each.

  “Thanks,” River said, sitting on a log. The water burned his throat, but he took two more sips before stopping to blow on the surface.

  “I ate your fish. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I figured it was payment for saving your waterlogged self, but to be honest, I was just hungry.”

  “I can get more.”

  “Oh yeah? So you’re, like, one of the real survivalists? A mountain man or whatever?”

  “Not so far.”

  The clouds over the mountain now blocked the sun, and the air chilled. It was late afternoon. He’d been out for longer than he realized.

  “Right. Well, I totally saved you, didn’t I? I remembered what they said about water, about hypothermia and all that. I fished you out, whipped your clothes off. Sorry about that, too, but it’s what the book said, so I did it. It is what the book says, right?”

  River nodded.

  The boy gave a lopsided grin and winked. “I like your tattoo. There some kind of special meaning to it?”

  River had gotten the star compass on his left shoulder blade last yea
r, the first anniversary of when his parents died. It was based on the Mariner card deck he and Terrell used to pack when they camped. It reminded him of when things were different. When he’d had friends—a best friend, even—and had actually liked spending time with them. That wasn’t the case now. He’d been lousy about answering texts or showing up. He hadn’t talked to Terrell in ages, let alone gone on one of their monthly backpacking trips. He felt bad about it, but he wasn’t good company nowadays. He was too in his head, too lost. The image of the compass was meant to remind him to find his way back again, no matter where he was.

  It was wishful thinking.

  River didn’t tell the boy all that, however. He’d already shared enough with him, not to mention the rest of the world. The guy seemed unconcerned with River’s silence and kept on chattering.

  “What’s your name, anyway? I saved your life—I should at least know your name.”

  River shifted position on the log. “River.”

  “River.” The boy sat on a large rock near the fire. “Like ‘cry me a river’?”

  “Just River.”

  “Your parents hippies or something?”

  “No.” Even through the fog still clouding his mind, he could tell that the guy’s jittery eagerness meant he was waiting for something from him, so he finally asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Are you kidding?” The boy rubbed a hand on his cheek, his eyebrows jumping high enough to raise his hairline. River had asked the wrong question. “I mean, I guess I look kind of ragged from being out here so long, but seriously, you don’t recognize me?”

  “Sorry.” River used a stick to push another log into the dying fire.

  “ThreeDz?”

  “Three-D? That’s your name?”

  “No, man, my name’s Trip.”

  “Trip? Like falling down?”

  “I prefer ‘What a long strange Trip it’s been.’ Or ‘Trip the light fantastic.’ Ever hear that one?” He studied River’s face, which remained politely unruffled, for a reaction. “But yeah, like falling down, too. Come on, are you serious? Internet-famous computer whiz kid? I was on the Today show. You’ve never heard of ThreeDz? The ThreeDz app? I created that.”

  River shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re something else, River. I mean, you go for a morning dip in icy water and nearly kill yourself, and now you tell me you don’t know about ThreeDz?”

  “So, what is it?” River asked, trying to keep irritation from his voice.

  River had never given much thought to whatever the latest tech gadget or app might be, and he certainly didn’t care what happened on the Today show. His parents had built their home on the edge of 1,500 square wilderness miles. He could bring a walkie-talkie into the woods for weeks at a time. What did he need a smartphone for? He didn’t need to check e-mail in front of a campfire. What it meant, however, was that sometimes it felt like everyone was speaking a language he’d never wanted to learn. The language Trip was speaking now when he lifted his arms high and spread them wide.

  “ThreeDz, man! It made all this possible. The live stream, the Skyms—that’s ThreeDz tech.”

  “So why’s it called Three-D?”

  “ThreeDz, ThreeDz. It’s a three-D camera stream. That camera you almost died for this morning? You made the right call. It’s worth more than your sorry ass.”

  “You invented the Skyms?” River said, impressed. They were small and flat, like a frying pan about eight inches around, with five separate, detachable camera lenses and a tiny screen in their center. He could tell they embodied a complex system, the way they tracked the contestants, how the lens zoomed in and focused on minute detail and slight movements as if propelled by instinct. When in the air, they split apart into five minicameras, capturing every angle of the environment to transmit a 3-D image, then joined together again. A week into the show, River realized he’d started imagining the Skym was some kind of intelligent alien creature. He’d had to remind himself that while it was a smart machine, it was mindless. Skyms had movement trackers, recognition data, motion sensors, and facial-expression readers, but they weren’t alive. They couldn’t think.

  “Nah, I didn’t invent the Skyms,” Trip said. “But I did design the app that streams the three-D VR content. Without me, those things are useless.”

  “It’s pretty useless to me. You should have invented a battery that lasts longer.” River regretted the comment when Trip grimaced, as if his feelings were hurt. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s cool. You’re not a tech guy, I get it.” He held his own cup up to River, toasting him in the air. “I’ll still share dinner with you. Nothing fancy, just snails from the rocks.” He nodded to where water lapped the shore. Pebbles rustled as waves rolled them out again, and the ocean rippled with foam and strips of seaweed. River welcomed the offer. Having something in his stomach, even the little pile of snails, would take some of the chill away.

  Trip gestured to his temporary shelter. “My real camp is over the ridge. I didn’t mean to be gone this long, but I didn’t want to ditch you, you know? You’re the first person I’ve seen in weeks. Anyway, this is all I put together for tonight. Not bad, though, considering.”

  River surveyed the ramshackle lean-to. It was wobbly, and if it rained tonight it wouldn’t offer any cover.

  River inhaled the cool, salty air. They hadn’t been told where the show was filming, but the landscape reminded him of the Pacific Northwest, where he’d grown up.

  What Trip had said earlier wasn’t exactly true: he hadn’t saved River’s life. If any of them got into real trouble, they’d be rescued. The show wouldn’t let anyone die. But getting doused in freezing water, with no fire or dry clothes, River would have had to tap out, and the deal with Jim wouldn’t fly after only a few weeks as a contestant. At least Trip had saved him from that.

  River looked out at the bay, wondering if he’d caught any fish on the line of his blue barrel. He’d never make it back to his own camp before dark, however. He could afford to stick with Trip for a while. They weren’t a team—River didn’t want a team. He’d camped for days at a time by himself, and he’d never missed the sound of someone else’s voice, had never wanted company badly enough to trade the security of having only himself to worry about. But after listening to the other boy yammer for the past hour, he realized he could use a break from his own thoughts.

  He dug in his pack for a length of rope, pulled on his boots, and set to work reinforcing the roof of the shelter while Trip kept up a steady chatter about apps and celebrities and tweets and what seemed like a million other things River didn’t care about.

  He’d stay with Trip until tomorrow at most, get the guy safely back to his own camp, and then he’d head out on his own again. No harm done.

  * * *

  They started hiking early the next day. The sun brightened and grew warmer as they walked, but once they entered the trees, only patches of light filtered through the forest. Late morning, they found a path that River identified as a game trail, which made him cautious. He had no desire to confront whatever wild animals lived in the area. He followed the trail anyway. The hike would be easier, they’d get to Trip’s camp faster, and then he’d be on his own again.

  In the trees, it was a different world from the ecosystem of the shore, where River had been spending most of his days. He’d trek into the woods to forage, but otherwise the ocean provided everything he needed. The forest made him think of his home and of wandering for hours through his own little plot of wilderness—except his home was much less mountainous, and also quieter. Here he was accompanied by Lawrence Johnson III, otherwise known as Trip, founder of the ThreeDz app, millionaire whiz kid who occasionally halted their hike to narrate to the Skyms. He talked about hunger; he talked about being sick of hiking; he talked about the three cars he owned back home, the yacht he’d bought his mom, and the flying lessons he’d been taking for the past few months.

  At times
the narration was about River himself, and Trip made him sound like some kind of modern-day Grizzly Adams, only without the beard, and those times were particularly irritating.

  Although Trip didn’t seem like someone who could survive by himself in the wilderness, he was at ease wielding his machete when they whacked through a tangly stretch of the trail. He was skinny, but wiry, confident in his body.

  The hike was uphill, and they stopped for a water break in a flat, sunny spot, sitting on a fallen tree free of moss. River felt the warmth of the sun absorbed by the tree’s smooth bark. His fully assembled Skym hovered overhead. Trip’s had broken apart, like segments of an orange, so five minicameras swarmed above them.

  “Look at that,” Trip said, pointing to them.

  “What?” River asked.

  “They know we’re together, so your camera is getting a straight-ahead shot, and mine is getting the three-D shot.”

  River took in the way the cameras surrounded him and Trip. “How do they do that?”

  “They’re smart. Without anyone telling them, they talk to each other, figure out how to get the best content for the show.”

  River nodded without really understanding. He was more comfortable with real, solid things. He trusted his hands to solve problems, and he didn’t like dealing with the misty abstractions of high tech. Sometimes he felt like he’d grown up in a different century.

  “Impressive,” he said.

  Trip let out a yelp when a spider the size of an acorn landed on his shoulder. He jumped from the log and slapped it away. River looked at him blankly until Trip shrugged.

  “I hate spiders. Most bugs, really. God, why are there so many here?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with spiders. They eat mosquitoes.”

  Trip shuddered dramatically. “They’re tiny monsters. Too many legs.”